Virtual reality viewers and headsets (collectively referred to as viewers) are becoming an increasingly popular way of viewing digital media, gaming and the like. With the widespread distribution of powerful and capable smartphone devices, many VR viewers are designed to use such smartphone devices as the visual display device, instead of having dedicated displays and electronics.
Typically the viewers have a housing that a user looks into in order to view the video display device contained within the housing. Viewers can be hand-held devices that a user holds up to the users face/eyes, for example, like a user would hold a pair of binoculars. Viewers can also be worn on a user's head, so as to free the user's hands while looking into the viewer.
As would be understood by those in the art, viewers configured to use a smartphone as the visual display device typically receive the smartphone such that the smart phone display is viewable when a user looks into the viewer housing. These viewers also typically include one or more optical lenses within the housing so as to facilitate a three-dimensional viewing experience despite the two-dimensional display of the smartphone. In some instances, the smartphone is completely contained within the housing, in other implementations the smartphone is attached to the housing in a manner such that the display is exposed within the interior of the viewer
One challenge to utilizing a smartphone in these types of viewers is that the touch sensitive display is concealed within the viewer housing, thereby making it difficult for a user to interact with the touch sensitive display of the device. To overcome this, some existing VR viewers utilize magnets on the exterior of the viewer as input devices, however one drawback is that the locations of magnetic sensors on smartphones vary from device to device and, as such, these viewers with magnetic inputs are only effectively used with a limited number of devices. Other VR viewers utilize built in accelerometers or other such position/orientation sensors within the smartphone to detect movement or the absence of movement and identify user inputs using the movement data. Other VR viewers utilize dedicated input devices, like video game controllers, that connect to the electronic device within the viewer either by a wired plug like connection (e.g., USB or Apple compatible connector), or a wireless connection capabilities. However, such VR viewer configurations typically require complex electronic circuitry and wireless connectivity capabilities in order to facilitate the capture and transfer of user inputs. Moreover, dedicated input controllers can be cumbersome when used with hand-held viewer.
What is needed is a VR viewer having integrated user input devices that is configured for use with a wide variety of conventionally available smartphone devices.
These considerations are addressed by the present invention.